The markets always attracted hoards of people who would crowd amongst themselves as soon as the morrow drew its first sunrise. They would bargain with the merchants to give up their coins for better prices, goods were shipped all the way from the high seas and the temperament of trades gloated around as they load and unload their galleons. The stalwart process of give and take was busy as ever and everyone lined up to keep it going, every day, even on that morning, when a stranger with silver hair gathered herself a crowd of stares as she passed by the stands.

Her face was a new and foreign one and people whispered among themselves as she meandered through the streets. But, they did not stir from fear, rather, people liked to stare at odd, shiny things from afar and she was no different. The young woman did not want to acknowledge whatever they found interesting on his features, be it her clothes or how she had a dark cloth wrapped around her eyes, and he simply busied himself with his daily morning routine of checking the quest board.

A couple of Fiore wizards gathered in front of the wooden structure, some arguing over others to declare which quest they would rather pick and while the rest quickly selected their sheets of quests and scuttled away back to their teams. Using her petite figure as an advantage, she slipped between the mages and settled by the front of the quest board. Sapphire hues scanned over the lines written on the brittle sheets of yellow paper that were pinned up against the board as she struggled to decide which sort of mission she would like to undertake.

Chelvaric was sleeping on his bed as he was tired from the rat catching they did a day ago. He didn’t want to wake up and he just wanted to sleep as long as he could. He was always sleepy after all. Cats were like that they like to sleep all the time and only do lot’s of stuff at night. Sadly society worked more during the day than at night so he had to get up during the day and do some stuff. But he turned around in his bed and pulled the sheets over him to push the sun away from him. He didn’t want to wake up yet. He had a nice dream about his Deerling and some other strange creature. He wondered what that was all about. Since he had lost scraggy he felt very lonely nothing would happen since he was always sleeping and no one would wake him up.

At least the time he spends with Snow was nice intermezzo’s to break his daily routine. Nothing else made him happy lately. He still did his prayers of course and he offered as much meat as he could when he wasn’t doing anything else. But still meeting with Snow was like winning the lottery that kind of happiness. He rolled around again and looked at the bottle of water that was standing next to his bed. He took it from the ground and opened the lit. the cold water poured into his mouth refreshing his tongue. It felt so nice and it was good to have a drink when the sun was trying to burn every person alive. He looked around and saw his sack of jewels he took it from the desk and opened it up. Only a small amount of jewels were staring at him. He had put most of his money in the bank to save up but now he had little spending money. He did win some money from the casino but it wasn’t a big amount. Especially not to pay his room for. He would have to take up another job.

He rolled out of bed and opened the closet door. There were a couple of jeans staring into his face. He took one of them out and put it on. The jeans tightened around his figure and he zipped the zipper and buttoned up the button. The pants were quite tight but it was still good fitting. He opened the door and locked it behind him.

Chelvaric walked through the streets of crocus towards the place where the quest board was. When he arrived it seemed fairly busy as a couple of images were looking through the jobs. He was looking over the board when he suddenly saw Snow. “Oh, Snow are you here to pick up a job too why don’t we do one together?”, he said to her and then looked over the board. There were jobs ranging from criminal capturing to clearing out goblins. But he saw a rather special job hanging on the side of the board. “Here why don’t we take this one”, he said to her and handed over the job request to her.

With an index finger and thumb rubbing against her chin, Snowflake battled her thoughts on picking the perfect mission to go on for the day. Long missions are dreadful and exhausting while easy ones are simply just boring, which includes of her walking dogs, delivering food and other basic stuffs. As much as Snowflake wished to recoil from the responsibility of a mage, she did not want to waste the entire day not doing anything. Her fingers idly glossed over the rough texture of the brittle sheets, skimming through the lines all over again until a voice approached behind her.

Snowflake turned around, only to see a familiar face – no other than her job partner, Chelvaric, greeting her with a smile. It seemed that he wished to do some quests for the day as well, but perhaps, his reason might be different from hers. ”Yes. That works perfectly fine.” She agreed his proposition and randomly picked a quest before tearing it from the board itself. With someone else accompanying in a quest, she did not have to struggle choosing missions because she knew that it would be less boring, especially with Chelvaric.

Her steps would all but falter as she addressed the message properly, the crowds that littered through the streets of Crocus shuffling past her still figure. It appeared that Snowflake was lucky enough to pick a rather interesting quest; one that required to take a visit to the palace to meet the princess as well as the king of Crocus. According to the request written on the paper, the Fiore wizards have to entertain the king by all means and honestly, she would not have taken up for the job however, the final reward upon accomplishment was so damn good that she had no choice but to accept the offer.

”Seems like we’re going to have to dress up a bit. We’re meeting the king.”

Chelvaric walked through the city with Snow as they had to get to the palace. This job was very fancy as they had to meet the princess and the king. He wondered how they would be. Maybe they were full of themselves and didn’t rule good or something. But he didn’t know that so he wouldn’t presume that. It was not like the people in Fiore had bad lives so they were probably good rulers. Although he didn’t know much about them. He should get try to know more about the political scene in Fiore. Since he was from another country. In his place, everyone would rather die honorably for the empire then live a dishonored live. But he didn’t think it was like that in Fiore.

They walked through the crowded streets and had to be careful where they stepped as horse poop was laying everywhere. In the middle of the day, it was always like that. A dozen flies were buzzing around in the streets and he had to swat some away now and then. When they arrived in the more elaborate places in Fiore it was totally different. The streets were nice and clean and there were little boy’s running around to remove anything that could be bad for the reputation of the city.

They arrived at the shopping street and Chelvaric entered a shop together with snow. it was a very nice shop for more glamorous and formal clothing. Inside the suits and dresses were hanging on magically made puppets that were moving around on command so that you could have a nice look on it. You didn’t have to fit the clothes either as the puppets would shape themselves to your body type. It was handy but he rather put it on himself to get a feel of the fabric. But he guessed that the clothes were more expensive than other places. “Well what do you think of this suit Snow”, he asked of her and he pointed at a really nice black and white suit that had some small golden ornaments on the sleeves of the suit. He liked the look of it and he walked around the puppet to see if it fit good in all the areas of his body.

The Fiore-bound wizards’ current task was to find a proper dress and suit to make themselves look representable in front of the royal family. Sure enough, she was not going to show up at the palace looking like as if she was attending the funeral despite the fact that her attire was her favourite outfit and black was also her favourite colour. The two Blue Pegasus mages weaved through the streets filtered with Crocus townsfolk, guests and visitors from other towns as well as countries and the path would lead them towards a clothing store nearby, obviously, a decent one where the prices would not be too high as well.

Through the glass doors, Snowflake could see different kinds of outfits put on display on the bodies of the plastic models, both men and women. From the look of their attires, the store seems like it would have nice clothes with decent prices. The bell rang softly as she pushed the glass doors open and cold wind from the air conditioner installed inside the room would blast into her face, spreading a nice cool sensation over her body.

Walking inside the store, her sapphire optics scanned around the place, taking in everything in her sight. An employee approached them, asking if they needed any help but the girl would just say that that she would like to browse for a while. The employee smiled upon her request, bowing at the two customers at a slight angle before walking away, leaving the entire store up to themselves. Snowflake proceeded onwards to the nearest dressing stand, her fingers glossing over the soft textures of the clothing while Chelvaric was also busy picking out suits for himself.

It took her hours to finally decide on the perfect outfit that she found the most appealing among the pile of clothes in the entire store. It was a black outfit, which was to be expected, embedded with sequences and glitters at the bottom of the dress that pooled around her feet. The attire greatly enhanced her natural curves on her body, showing off her ample assets and she chose some white high heels to pair it off with her entire look. When she exited the changing room, Chelvaric asked her if the tuxedo he pointed looked nice.

”It’d suit you. Go try it on.”

Chelvaric waited for Snow to come out of the changing room since she already had decided and was getting dressed for it. He guessed girls made their mind up quickly about clothes. It did take a bit, but not that long, before she came out. She was stunning as always. A black dress with glitters on it was wrapped around her tight body. Her ankles looked thin and nice at the bottom of the dress were her white heels. That was a bit of an odd choice wearing black and white. But it was still really amazing and he loved it.

“You look beautiful”, was the only thing he could say before grabbing his suit and walking into his changing boot. He pulled his clothes off and folded them nicely on to a heap. He then started to put his pants on and put the belt into it that he had picked while snow was changing. He tightened it greatly so it was fitting good around his body. He then wore a white shirt and buttoned it up neatly. He stroked his collar to make it look good. He then put the suit on and looked into the mirror. It made him look quite handsome if he would say so himself. He came outside of the booth and looked at Snow with a smirk. “So what do you think? If you're ready to let’s pay and get to the castle”, he said to her and then looked at her waiting for an awnser.

”You look beautiful.” – was all he said and that compliment was enough to bring a light crimson colour to her cheeks. But, before she could do anything, Chelvaric took the suit that he had showed her previously and scuttled away into a changing room, leaving Snowflake behind, stunned and blinking owlishly. While he was busy changing, the youth wandered around the store, checking out new outfits as well as the ones that were in trend. The store was pretty decent with nice clothes as well so, it was likely that she would come visit again to get some more clothes. Fashion is also one of her hobbies, after all and girls liked to look good.

Shortly after, Chelvaric exited the changing room, dressed neatly in a tuxedo, showing off his broad shoulders and his hair sleeked back nicely. The employee of the store came by once again, a large smile spread across her lips. ”You two look so good. What a beautiful couple.” The woman stated, with an awkwardly happy expression written across her face. Not sure how to respond to the woman’s statement, she quickly exchanged looks with her partner and immediately brought them out of discussion.

”I’d like to buy these two outfits. Can we also have our worn clothes in a bag, please?”

”Oh, most certainly. Give me one moment.” The woman took their clothes from their hands and gestured her to follow to the counter to pay for the dresses and suit. While she was busy folding the clothes and placing them inside a bag, Snowflake edged a hand inside her pocket and retrieved jewels to pay for the clothing that they had just bought. Once paid, the woman would beam up at her again, greeting them out of the door. ”Thank you for a lovely business. Hope you see you again!”

Chelvaric looked blushingly at the lady as she just had said that they looked like a beautiful couple. Ah, how he wished that were true. Well, they did spend lots and lots of time together. Not to mention they both seemed to be at least liking each other a bit more than just friends. Well, he couldn’t say for snow of course but she did blush when he commented and stuff so he did think she liked him a lot. But ah well he still didn’t know if she truly felt something for him or not. She paid for the clothes and then they said goodbye to the store lady. She wouldn’t mind them coming back. Well, they did buy two expensive outfits. Who wouldn’t want to bring back people who buy your most valuable products? He hoped this job would at least pay them back a bit. Because they spent a lot on the clothes themselves.

They walked through the streets of crocus towards the Domus Flau. The streets were not that busy so the walk wasn’t that cumbersome. He liked it more this way so that he didn’t have to push through people and fall or get someone mad at him or anything. When they arrived at the location he was in awe of the size of the building. It wasn’t as big as the palace but it was really nice. Four enormous statues were decorating each corner of the arena. It was quite nice and he loved the place already. He should come back some time to watch gladiators fight in this arena. It was also the place where the magic games were always held. He never participated but he did see them.

Upon their arrival at the castle, they would be greeted by the guards, who would grant them with performer tags stuck onto their clothing before they were permitted inside the building. The place was grand and large, with pillars supported everywhere, meters above the ground and were attached to the roof. In the middle of the entire area was an enormous area, specifically made for concerts, performances and games, such as gladiator battles and so on. It was her ever first experience of seeing an arena as big as this and undoubtedly, she was struck by awe.

A young blonde approached the two Blue Pegasus mages, with a trail of guards following behind the woman. From her appearance, Snowflake could tell that the woman was probably the same age as hers, perhaps even younger, but she was a gorgeous woman for sure. ”I’ve been waiting for you. You must be the two mages.” The blonde greeted them with a warm smile, as if she had been expecting their appearance for so long before gesturing them to follow her inside a private room. The performance has not even begun, yet, a large amount of people have begun to enter the building through the large entrance while they take their seats and awaited for what was to be on show.

The woman directed the guards to stay outside of the room, while she discussed business with the mages and closed the door behind her. Seeing how nervous and concerned about the situation she was, Snowflake assumed that this woman was perhaps, the princess. ”You must be the princess of the country.” She declared, awaiting for a response and folded her arms across her chest while she stood by the door.

”Yes. That’s true.” All of a sudden, the smile from the princess’ face faded into a very worried expression. ”The reason I invited you mages is because I wanted you to perform for my father, the king.” She seated herself at a vacant seat and looked up at Snowflake. ”He’s been having….his moments. I just want this day to be a little more enjoyable for him. Help me, please.” For the princess to beg two strangers that she had just met, it seemed to be a serious situation for her. Snowflake nodded, after exchanging looks with Chelvaric to agree upon her request.

Chelvaric entered the building and they waited as a blond girl with some guards was walking towards them. she didn’t look bad but not really anything he would be interested in she was wearing a formal dress and she looked important. She was probably the princess. She greeted them and Chelvaric made a bow before he followed her to the location of a room. A lot of people were starting to flood into the arena to watch the performance.

A lot of other performers were already preparing themselves on the sides of the arena and were ready to give their best for the job. He looked at them carefully before they entered a nice fancy office. He didn’t like the room too much too smelly to candles and too bad atmosphere. The princess seemed in distress. He wondered why the king would act like that after he listened to her story. He seemed to be quite whiny just because he was bored. Wasn’t a king supposed to be busy all the time with ruling and other stuff? How would he get boring? He was quite annoyed by this king. “Well don’t worry we'll do our best to entertain him. We better head out then and not wait too long before we start on the entertainment.”, he said to the princess and Snow.

The loud voice came through the speaker, startling her and the rest of the people in the room. The greeting was followed by loud cheers of the crowd, displaying their enthusiasm before the host listed out the names of the performers who was responsible of beginning the show with their performances. The princess declared that they should wait behind the stage and get prepared for whatever would be necessary and bid them farewell, stating that they would meet again once the performance was over. Snowflake nodded and gestured Chelvaric to follow her to the back of the stage.

It was not her first time performing for the audience and it certainly would not be the last either, so she had a bit of experience of what she should be doing. Despite that, Snowflake was still nervous of facing such a big audience. She had a plan of what she should be doing on stage and she assumed Chelvaric would be the same as well. Half an hour later, their names would be called out upon the stage as the last performance. A sigh escaped her lips before she took a huge intake of air to prepare herself for the performance. Silently wishing she wouldn’t screw up and ruined up the entire performance, she climbed the wooden stairs up to the stage. The curtains flew open, revealing herself to the rest of the audience and the entire arena roared with cheers and claps.

The host had called the start for the event so he had to go out and face the mass of people. He didn't like being in the spot light so this wasn’t really fun for him. Why did they take this job again? Oh yeah because it was for the king but It never mentioned they had to perform for other people too! He didn’t even know there was gonna be a big event in the city today or he wouldn’t have done a job in the first place.

He sighed loudly and walked behind Snow having a crooked smile as he was not on his case at all. He would do some Acrobat stuff he guessed that was the only thing he could show since he didn’t really know anything else he wondered if he would be yelled at if he did badly. But Neko's did have a good agility so he was sure he could show some stuff that humans only could dream of doing without years of practice. But still, there were definitely humans who were better than him in it or had other skills he didn’t have. He just hoped he wouldn’t screw up while he was performing. He waved to the people while he walked to the middle of the arena. He felt nervous and he didn’t know who was gonna start him or Snow so he waited for the host to speak.

The lights directed to face the stage beamed up at her face and instinctively, she placed a hand in front of her to shield her eyes before moving further to the center of the stage, where the host stood waiting for the final performers. Inside, she was nervous but the expressions on her face stated otherwise. Not wanting to look so emotionless, Snowflake attempted to at least manage a smile even though she did not want to, for the sake of the princess and the king.

”Let’s welcome the final performers with a round of applause!” The host exclaimed with such a cheery tone, that somehow, Snowflake was already sick of hearing his voice the last half an hour.

The white haired mage nodded at Chelvaric, indicating that she will perform first so that she could get it over fast. He could also watch her performance and perhaps, even learn something from it. Before she began her performance, she bowed towards the audience, her hands clasped near her abdomen area while she gazed upon the audience that surrounded her. Snowflake never liked being the center of attention and it felt extremely uncomfortable to have everyone’s eyes fixated on her. She took a long breath once again, only to exhale out of her chest.

The entire auditorium fell silent, as if they were curious about what performances she was going to act out. Unlike other performers who mostly danced and sung, she wanted hers to be a little more different and unique, to make the entire event more enjoyable. The curtains behind them flew open, revealing a bunch of arrow targets lined neatly, specifically 5. She lifted up her hand towards them, her palm spread open before her fingers flew out of her hand like tiny rockets, each flying towards the center of the target. A gasp resounded among the crowd, surprised to see fingers shooting out of the hand until a sudden realisation would strike them that she was not actually human.

Chelvaric was blinded by the light that suddenly shined in his face he was so annoyed by it and he couldn’t see anything. He wanted to walk through the stage without this goddamn light. He tried to see something but everything was so blinding. He was annoyed by it and he didn’t want to do anything since he would miserably fail in these circumstances. Snow nodded to him that she would take the stage first. He was fine with that and he stayed at the side of the stage. The crowd was applauding and he watched snow bowing before them.

She already looked like a skilled performer. He wonders if she had ever preformed before. Well, she was a beauty so that definitely helped. He could see the guys in the public be all whistling to her. He turned around as he heard the curtain behind them opening up. It seemed that five archery targets were lined up there and ready to be shot at. But Snow wasn’t holding a bow how would she target them and as far as he knew she didn’t have magic either. But to his surprise, her fingers suddenly flew away towards the targets. He was quite surprised and he wondered if she could attach them again.

It would have made her feel horrible if the crowd of audience started to ‘boo’ at her performance but it was far from being finished. There were a few awkward claps in the crowd, some wondering what the hell the performance was supposed to be. These people probably never met an android before in their lives and now that they were able to encounter one, they were unsure how to react. When there was no other response from the audience, Snowflake decided to move onto the next one that she had thought in mind.

The next performance would be her trick, or so she planned and hopefully, it would turn out the way she had expected it to be. Her body was still rusty to perform tricks, since she had never actually used them before, not in front of people and she had yet to test out all her abilities and the upgrades that her doctor had installed for her. She slammed her arms against each other, pointing towards the sky and with her activation, numerous rockets would extrude out of her arm and forearm. Some let out a yelp, while others whispered among each other in scrutiny at her performance but it was not done yet.

The rockets located by the side of her arms would fly up into the sky before it exploded, into numerous fireworks, each differently coloured and in a variety of sizes and shapes. She watched the audience stared up at the sky in awe, before it would suddenly roar in cheers and laughter, smiles all written on their faces and rewarded her with a loud applause. Performance succeeded.

Chelvaric kept looking at Snow's performance as she was busy doing something else. The crowd was clapping a little bit as a lot of them didn’t really know what to think about her performance so far. He guessed that not many of them had seen a cyborg before. He hoped no one would hate her for being one. He looked at the sudden rockets coming out of her arms. The first was surprised and then he was worried they would fly into the crowd but they didn’t as they exploded in fireworks all around them. “That’s so beautiful.”, he whispered and then the crowd was applauding and standing up for her.

He wondered if they would do the same for him. She left the stage and he entered. Chelvaric shouted,”Card of the ropes!” Not much later a whole bunch of ropes was hanging on the stage. Chelvaric started to jump in between the ropes and do flips and spins. He felt really good to be flying around the ropes and it was like he was playing on a play ground with just more advanced moves. His flexibility was displayed and after he landed back on the stage everyone was applauding.

They walked off the stage and wanted to go outside the area but lots of people were suddenly storming them and shouting for their signature. They started to give some signatures to people for a little while before some guards dispersed the people and said that the king wanted to see them. they followed the guards and entered the VIP lounge of the king. It was super nice, the chairs were decorated with the nicest silk and golden ornaments. The place was really nice. The king waved them to his place. He looked quite old and had a long gray beard. His crown was magnificent and pretty large. “Thank you for the great show I was highly amused.”, the king said to them and then the princess next to him gave the order to the guards to give the money to them. she then mentioned she would need them again in the future. After that, they were let out of the arena and went on their own ways.


[END JOB]